The year in books #19: The City & The City

It is not at all unusual for a novel to be as much about its own setting as about the characters within it, and because of the genre's focus on exploring novel concepts, the science fiction genre is particularly rife with books in which the planet, nation or city in which they take place is not the background but the entire point. Some classic examples include Herbert's Dune, Niven's Ringworld and Varley's Titan, which are also some of my all-time favorite novels. It amused me to realize that, of the six novels nominated for this year's Hugo award, three of them are of this type, each of them taking place in a city that is itself one of the most important characters in the book. In Palimpsest, the city that lends the book its title is both the motivating force behind, and the setting of, the great majority of the action. Steampunk Seattle is the setting of Boneshaker, as well as the only thing in the novel with an interesting personality. And my nineteenth book of the year, China Miéville's The City & The City, takes place in the sister cities of Besžel and Ul Qoma, brilliantly rendered and utterly believable invented cultures which provide a fascinating backdrop to a murder mystery that is, if not as brilliantly constructed as the setting it is solved in, certainly interesting enough to keep the pages eagerly turning.

Like Palimpsest, the discovery of Besžel's and Ul Qoma's nature is one of the great delights of the novel, and I'll not ruin it by delving too deeply into the book's premise. What I will say is that that premise seems, on the face of it, laughably ridiculous. What Miéville does with remarkable mastery is to present that premise in such a natural, fluid and consistent way that the reader is able to utterly suspend disbelief, and to craft a very entertaining story on the basis of that premise.

Most important to me, The City & The City goes a step beyond crafting a clever world and an entertaining story. Miéville has things to say, and he says them well. Things about the nature of the Other, of the malleability of human perception, about the nature of culture, about divisions between rich and poor, even about peace in the Middle East (I cannot be the first reader to see the novel's setting as an allegory of Palestine, can I?). The reason I am drawn to science fiction is its exploration of the human meaning of new ideas. The City & The City is not properly science fiction, but it does the same work using different tools. If science fiction is a study of the social impact of technology, then The City & The City might be best described as social fiction, exploring the social impact of societies themselves.

I can definitely recommend this one to you - barring a remarkable performance by Wake, the only Hugo-nominated novel I haven't read yet, The City & The City is my favorite to win the prize. It's only about a micron ahead of Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, though, which I'll likely review next so that I can explain why I want the prize to go to Miéville.